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Piner High School STE(A)M Certificate Level 1

-Orca Dynasty-
Thanh Ma

Presentation Topic: Orca Dynasty

Presenter: SPARQ Digital Theater
Date: January 25, 2024

Summary:
I watched a movie presented by the SPARQ Digital Theater called Orca Dynasty.

A National Geographic Explorer, Brian Skerry, spent 3 years filming and exploring to
reveal an extraordinary truth about the complexity of Orcas. Orcas are the apex predators of the
ocean that are known as “killer whales'' and weigh approximately 4 tons and are known for their
intelligence, sentient, and cognitive understanding of one’s emotions. Each family of Orca pods
speaks a unique language, loves deeply, plays with joy, and mourns their death. The complexity
of their understanding of one's feelings cannot be compared to that of a human. This movie
showcased 5 different pods of orcas around the world, like in New Zealand, Norway, Antarctica,
Falkland Island, and Patagonia, and how their day-to-day habits, cultures, and hunting technique
differs from each other.
New Zealand’s Pod of Orcas, uses a specialized technique called echolocation.
Echolocation is a series of clicks that bounce off their surroundings to identify something as
small as a coin. New Zealand’s Pods communicate through a series of chirps and whistles, unlike
Norway’s Pods. Norway’s pod of orcas uses pulsed calls to converse with her pod. These
languages are taken and adapted by each pod of orcas to communicate within their community.
In other words, specialized only for a specific family use.
Additionally, each pod of orcas adapts a specific hunting culture to them. New Zealand's
Orca has a unique style of hunting. Their tactic is to catch rays and flip the ray or herself upside
down to put it to sleep, this is helpful because it allows the orcas to have easy handling of their
prey. On the other hand, the Norway pod of orcas’ goal is to attempt to ambush their meal
(herrings), by trying to herd the herring into a ball. They would then flash white bellies to
frighten the herring, blow bubbles to force the fish to the surface, and the matriarch would slap
the ball of fish with her tail, knocking them out. The last hunting tactic/culture that was
mentioned in the movie was that of the Falkland Island pod of Orcas. Their hunting style is
similar to that of Norway's pod but involves more patience among the orcas. Falkland Island pod
of orcas learned to ambush the colony of elephant seals once sundown starts. They would hide
underwater where the colony of seals would rest, and wait until the seals ventured out into the
water to hunt for their meal. That is when the matriarch orca goes into action to attack the lone
seal. The matriarch would also call her family for reinforcement. Elephant Seals are equipped
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with teeth and nails and can weigh an extensive amount. To be exact, a female elephant seal
weighs nearly a ton, and a big male elephant seal can weigh more than a pickup truck.
On the other hand in the frigid waters of the Antarctic Peninsula, in the southern ocean,
fur seals are not included in the diet of Antarctica’s pod of orcas, because of this, Fur seals do not
fear the orcas that live in the area. Antarctica’s pods are one of the smallest pods of orcas in the
area and are known to not produce many offspring. It can be extremely detrimental to the
survival rate of the pod when a fur seal attacks an orca. Additionally, Antarctica’s orcas can live
as long as humans and are known as the world’s most social orcas with as many as 75 animals in
one pod.
Family traditions and the culture of an orca can be extremely complex and important.
The more complex their traditions, the harder it is to pass down from generation to generation/
keep it alive. The Patagonia pod of orcas is one of the most famous and powerful pods that
performs the most impressive feat of all. To hunt, they must learn to listen, read, and interpret the
tide conditions and the sound of movement of the pebble. This hunting technique is only taught
to the matriarch's successor. There are as few as 12 orcas in the entire continent who master this
skill. The matriarch's successor would inherit these traditions and knowledge from their
grandmother, and use it to survive. There are many ways the matriarch would be taught this
knowledge. One would be when the grandmother would catch the seal to allow her grandkids to
practice handling the prey alive. Two would be when the grandkids would learn to hunt by
practicing with seaweed. Studies have shown that young orcas with a grandmother showing them
the way, are nearly 5 times more likely to survive. Orcas are in every way similar to that of a
human. They are known for their incredible skills like mastering their crafts and passing their
knowledge down for generations to come. There is so much to discover about orcas, but as of the
moment, this is the first time this kind of behavior has been observed.

Reflection:
This is the first time learning more in-depth about Orcas and the cultural differences
between each pod worldwide. The documentary offered an eclectic variety of facts about some of
the different pods of Orcas globally. One part that stood out to me while watching the
documentary, is that most of the matriarch hunters in the orca’s pods are female. Based on this
observation, I’ve come to question that if females are the only main hunters in their family, then
what role do the male orcas play? Additionally, I’ve learned that New Zealand’s pod of Orcas
flip their prey upside down to put it to sleep. If hunting traditions are passed down from
generation to generation, then how did the first ever generation discover this specialized hunting
technique? Was it by coincidence or was this thought out carefully? The documentary showed
that people would get out of their way to interfere and help the male orca when he got stuck in
the fishing line. It was even more impressive when the narrator said that the orca seemed to
understand what the national geographic explorer was trying to do. The male orca understood
that the humans had good intentions. Because orcas seem to understand human body language or
any body language overall, I’ve come to wonder how smart are orcas compared to the average
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human IQ. It was stated in the movie that more herring pass through the fjords of Norway every
spring than there are people on Earth. I wonder how they came to this conclusion. How sure
were they that this information given was accurate? Is there any tangible proof or is it just an
assumption? Overall, watching and learning about animals living in the deep sea makes me want
to be a marine biologist. However, I don’t see myself doing anything related to this occupation
because I don’t know how to swim, and do not plan on swimming in the vast ocean in the future.

Related Article:
“Center for Whale Research - Our Research.” CWR, www.whaleresearch.com/orcasurvey.

Similar to the film that was shown, this article presents information and data that was
collected through an extensive amount of research on Southern Resident Killer Whales. This
research started from 1976 (this is when the world did not have much information on killer
whales) to present time. The article went over other factors that may have led to Southern
Resident Killer Whales’ to be part of the critically endangered marine animals. It was said that in
2011, Southern Resident Killer Whales are one of the critically endangered marine mammals in
the United States and Canada.Throughout this research project it was found that the population
size of Southern Resident Killer Whales depended on the availability of Chinook salmon, which
are the predominant diet of this species. It was observed that the orca’s population would
drastically decrease when the availability of Chinook Salmon decreased.
Additionally, according to some research, Southern Resident Killer Whales rely on the
teaching of the matriarch of the pods (similar to what was said in the film presented). Male Orca
in general rely on matriarchal teaching more than the younger females in the pods. Without their
matriarchal guidance, younger killer whales are more susceptible to harm. If this information
was put into statistics, male Southern Resident Killer Whales’ casualties would rise by 8 percent
after the death of the matriarch, compared to female killer whales casualties with an increase of
2.7 percent. This information supports the idea of how important it is to have a mariachical
presence within a pod of Orcas.
I was also surprised when I found out that Southern Resident Killer Whales are extremely
similar to humans (I already knew they were similar however it did not occur to me how similar
they were to us humans). Killer whales do not reproduce often because of the competition and
limited resources. It was also said that in order to maintain the population of killer whales and
not compete with their daughters, older female killer whales would stop reproducing which
would lead to the evolution of menopause in Southern Resident Killer Whales just like humans.